Remembering the fall of the great wall of communism

On the evening of November 9 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, ending an era of European division and heralding a new age of peace, prosperity and optimism.

For 28 years the Wall made Berlin the ultimate border city, the place where the Iron Curtain met materiality.

It was the fault line between East and West, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorship.

While it stood, the Wall came to symbolize Berlin the way the Eiffel Tower does Paris. Principally, however, the Wall divided the two Germanys, separating a nation between oppression and freedom.

Seen as Europe’s ultimate emblem of the Cold War, the Wall was first erected on August 13, 1961, in the dead of night. The next morning, Berliners woke to find a makeshift barricade of barbed wire across their city.

These fences were rapidly replaced by more concrete structures, essentially imprisoning a community of 17 million people.

Within a year, the Wall was seven and a half miles long, with barbed wire spanning the remaining miles of Berlin.

Watchtowers loomed above Berlin - divided by 12 feet of concrete. Fields, streets, and families were bisected without warning, and life was expected to continue unhindered on both sides of Germany.

But life couldn’t have been more different on both sides of Germany. The East, or German Democratic Republic (GDR), was years behind their compatriots in the West, who enjoyed a much higher standard of living.

Those who tried to escape from Germany’s straightjacket in the East often paid with their lives. The Russian liberators of Berlin ran an outdated hard-line, with the secret police, known as the Stasi, holding tight control over the population.

The Stasi were quick to term any dissident as an enemy of the state, keeping East Germans suppressed until 1989, when a show of civil courage in Poland reverberated across the Eastern-bloc.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was the symbolic collapse of communism in Europe, but the wave of revolution that swept across Europe in 1989 started through a campaign of solidarity shown by fledgling Polish workers.

This event dissolved a four-decade-old mentality of oppression and fear in the Eastern-bloc. It echoed across Europe, igniting peaceful political upheaval in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.

Once Europe’s revolution reached the GDR, the momentum of the people was too strong to suppress. East Germans realised that in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, protesters would not be suppressed with violence.

In a live broadcast, East Germany’s Communist rulers gave permission for a relaxation of borders, leading thousands of people to converge on crossing points – Germany’s first successful revolution in history was bloodless.

Dr Tony Coulson is a lecturer in German cultural studies at DCU. He witnessed the events 20 years ago while living on the Western frontier of Berlin, and recalls the ambivalence as the situation unfolded.

“It was something people in West Berlin hadn’t been prepared for, and there wasn’t too much euphoria or enthusiasm.

“There was almost a sense of anxiety about how East Germans would take to the ethnic mix of people established in the West.

“As events unfolded I watched people coming in from the East and witnessed their reactions as they saw the everyday luxuries that people in the West enjoy - it then occurred to me that the GDR couldn’t exist anymore.

The reason why the Wall stood was to preserve the existence of the GDR, but once the floodgates were opened to the West, people were never going to go back and accept communist restrictions again.”

Months before the fall of the Wall, it was becoming apparent that Germany could no longer remain divided by spheres of influence.

Pushing for reform, demonstrators adopted the now celebrated slogan “Wir sind das Volk” (we are one people).

“The collapse of the Wall wasn’t something people in West Germany were prepared for.

“It was regarded as passé to embrace the idea of German unification, which was possibly due to the Hitler years.

“If the revolution had happened under any other Soviet leader it may not have been successful, but because Gorbachev let East Germans decide their own fate, unification was the best way forward for both sides of Germany.”

On October 3 1990, less than a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, reunification of the two Germanys became a reality.

A new Germany emerged at the heart of Europe, dismantling the ruins of the old order.

Christian Strowa watched the events as a child from his home in the West German city of Cologne.

He has experienced the effects in German society, since the recent turnarounds in the country’s history.

“The fall of the Berlin Wall and the events linked to it have become, in many ways, a huge part of German culture.

“It’s now an important part of German education – anything you learn in school is largely influenced by those events.

Strowa remembers particular images and events surrounding the fall of the Wall, and despite being too young to “comprehend” the significance of the event, he remembers the profound sense of excitement.

“I was eight years old when the Wall fell but I remember watching the news a lot. But, I was obviously was too young to comprehend the situation and the significance of the event.

“I do distinctly remember New Year’s Eve that year. Everybody in my family was gathered around the TV watching a big party from Berlin, which was showing people celebrating on top of the Wall.

“One of my friends was from East Germany and was living in the West as a refugee. After the Wall came down his family rushed back to the East to see their family, which they were prevented from seeing for years.

“As a kid I didn’t really understand the implications of what this meant to his family and many others Germans, but as I got older I began to realise the huge importance and the significance of the event.”

The School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) is currently running a film series on Wednesdays, that will be focusing on the collapse of the Berlin Wall. British film maker Ian Hawkins will be at DCU on November 18, discussing his documentary “My DDR t-shirt” - a film looking at what life was like for those living in the GDR.